Trauma, Displacement And Reconciliation

Universally acclaimed for his dexterous and distinctive prose in depicting the psychological complexities of quotidian existence, Kazuo Ishiguro now occupies an incontestably important status in contemporary literature world and nearly all his published novels have been canonized, flourishing both in literary circles and among common readers. Yet, by virtue of his ethical identity, the reading of Ishiguro's works has been expediently dominated by post-colonial and cultural studies in vogue in the academia. The prominent feature of deracinated characters in confessional retrospect has been labeled as the writer's attempt to compensate for his imaginary homeland through the power of art, overlooking Ishiguro's fundamental concerns for human existence that is transcendent of cultural barriers. Therefore, taking an existentially psychoanalytic perspective, this study is devoted to the exploration of the recurrent motifs in Ishiguro's works through the examination of the protagonists in three major novels, namely, Stevens the butler in The Remains of the day (1989), Christopher Banks the detective in When We Were Orphans (2000), and Kathy H. the clone in Never Let Me Go (2005). Engulfed in the turbulent socio-political milieu, these"orphans"are either blatantly or inadvertently afflicted by traumatic childhoods, which turn out to be the very genesis of their troubled and displaced adult lives. Stevens, in devoting himself heart and soul to a dignified professional life, abandons his primary needs as a normal human being; Banks confuses his neurotic urge for recapturing the primordial happiness in his childhood with saving the world from the imminent catastrophe as a messianic figure; Kathy feebly accepts her status as"human sacrifice"without resistance. Despite of having simmered their lives in displacements, the denouements of the three novels, however, culminate in muted contentment signified by the protagonists'arrival at reconciliation with the pasts in the twilight of their lives, thus ensuring the possibility of regeneration both for the individuals and the masses in temporal existence.